Medea Benjamin: "Escorted."
Yes.
Rob Kall: OK. Again: did you feel that you accomplished
something significant in doing this?
Medea Benjamin: Yes. I
feel it was significant for a couple of reasons. 1) I think it's important that the President
gets challenged on both of the issues of Guantanamo and the drone issue, and 2)
doing it in a venue when he had built it up to be his critical foreign policy
speech was the perfect time to be a voice saying, "This isn't good
enough." The President is always being
challenged from the Right for not killing enough, and the voices of those of us
who are in the peace movement have been drowned out over these years of the
Obama Administration, and he hasn't listened to us.
Just a few days before his speech, we turned in
three hundred thousand (300,000) signatures - we meaning (mostly) Witness
Against Torture and other groups, like Amnesty International. Code Pink actually physically took them into
the White House in a meeting with Valerie Jarett, and that represented a
significant segment of the population that cares about the issue of
Guantanamo. On the issue of drones, we
have been pressuring the White House now for several years, and we don't get
much of a response from them. So having
a chance to actually address the President when the cameras are on, when you
can hear the interaction, is something that is a rare opportunity. And: then, the coverage is not just the Right
saying, "Oh, he wants to stop using drones so much, and this will give space
for Al Qaeda to regroup," or saying, "He wants to release the worst of the
worst from Guantanamo into our communities!" there will also be the voice of
those of us from a more Progressive standpoint saying, "He hasn't done enough
to release these people from Guantanamo, he hasn't done enough to stop the use
of these drones," and that helps to shift the debate.
Rob Kall: OK. So, let's talk about the logistic side of
this. First, you told me before we
started this conversation on the air that you weren't going to disclose how you
got in. That's fine, but can you give,
in general terms, tips or advice on how to get into a press conference like
that?
Medea Benjamin: It wasn't a press conference, it was a speech
at the National Defense University.
Whenever the President is speaking somewhere, we try to get somebody at
the venue to give us an invitation. We
put out all of our feelers, all the people that might have some access to an
invitation, and see if we can get one.
We also do try to register, or contact people in the press, to see if we
could go to represent a media organization.
Sometimes, believe it or not, we have attempted to just walk in, and
once that actually worked with me.
The main thing is to try all different ways. The only thing, really, that can happen is
that you get turned around; and while that might be embarrassing, it's not
illegal, you won't get arrested, you'll just get turned away. So there's really not a lot to lose in trying
whatever different means you can think of to get into the room.
Rob Kall: OK. What about preparing to go into the
room? The way you dress, the signs,
things along those lines? What do you
bring with you? What do you wear?
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